Overview

Microland, a leading specialist IT Infrastructure Services provider, strives to provide great service to its customers, no matter where on the planet they operate. But piecemeal network problems were diverting management attention and costing a fortune.

In seeking a solution, Guruprasad Murty found that some service providers had bits of the jigsaw but few had them all or, indeed, could make them fit together. That was until he spoke to BT Global Services.

Now a worldwide platform with BT Inbound Contact at its heart means Guruprasad and his colleagues can focus on growing the company, safe in the knowledge that customer calls are expertly handled. And at much less expense too.

As Microland continues to expand its customer base, BT is able to offer off-the-shelf capacity. That makes market entry easier and reduces time to revenue."- Guruprasad Murty, Vice President – IT & IS, Microland Limited

Challenge

From its offices in Bangalore, Microland is a global IT Infrastructure Services pioneer, looking after everything from desktops and servers to networks and applications. Equipped with leading edge remote infrastructure management tools, Microland has 2,500 highly-skilled service desk staff taking over 250,000 calls every month. They keep critical applications running for some of the world’s largest corporations.

With an enviable reputation to safeguard, Microland was aware that its network was becoming a limiting factor in providing effective end user support. Calls arrived at PBXs in regional Microland hubs, and were then backhauled to service agents in India using costly and failure-prone international private circuits. Worse, as new clients were taken on parallel networks had to be installed.

Guruprasad Murty, Vice President – IT & IS at Microland, explains: “Data centre space and maintenance of terminal equipment, coupled with providing individual client connectivity, meant that costs were becoming unsustainable. Equipment and circuit lead times also meant that estimated capacity had to be purchased in advance, often resulting in underutilisation and poor cash flow.”

With management effort diverted to addressing network problems rather than focusing on its clients’ IT estates, Microland decided to outsource call delivery by moving to a cloud-based model.

Solution

After exhaustive trials, a BT solution was chosen. Calls are now handled in-country using the BT Inbound Contact platform. They are converted to voice over IP and forwarded over BT IP Connect global to the network-embedded BT Cloud Contact CRM platform. Using an interactive voice response menu, skills-based routing founded on pre-defined criteria diverts the call to the Microland service agent best able to solve the enquiry at first point of contact.

The BT Cloud Contact platform has multichannel capabilities allowing voice, email, web chat, or co-browsing conversations. Integration with the Microland knowledge base provides a 360° view of a user’s fault history, further improving the customer experience. The platform’s flexibility means agents can be located in any of its contact centres, or even at home or on the move. Meanwhile, the BT One Voice service offers Microland global outbound voice and data connectivity to any of its clients around the world.

The resilience and scalability of the BT platform ensure that service integrity is maintained and capacity is always on tap. The BT solution can accommodate both analogue and IP telephony so customers can be migrated over a period of time without needing a fork-lift upgrade.

Value

With the BT service, Microland benefits from a future proof platform that uses the latest technology. Because BT Inbound Contact was able to work with existing local numbers, migration of the installed base onto the Inbound Contact platform was plain sailing. Furthermore, a pay-as-you-go commercial model means that Microland avoids upfront investment costs.

Capital expenditure is effectively reduced to zero, while operational expenditure exactly matches peaks and troughs in demand,” says Guruprasad Murty. “Calls routed over the BT IP Connect network enjoy reduced international call charges, and for some twenty-five countries those costs are removed completely. Overall we have saved substantial network expenditure.” Eliminating the need for in-house call routing equipment and private networks, and reducing the call on expensive real estate, offers Microland further savings.

With BT Inbound Contact, calls can be easily and automatically rerouted, meaning that disaster recovery is one less thing for Microland to worry about. “We are able to provide much better customer service and optimise the use of our contact centre agents because calls are distributed faster, more evenly, and more reliably, anywhere in the world,” concludes Guruprasad Murty.

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